At present, in hospitals where it is required to ensure that a patient does not roll off a bed, cot sides are erected. The cot sides comprise an articulated frame located at each side of the bed which can either occupy a collapsed position or a raised position in which they project above the mattress of the bed and are abutted by a patient to prevent them from rolling off the bed.
The cot sides are expensive to manufacture and tend to remain permanently attached to each bed, regardless of whether they are required. Furthermore, when they are being moved between the collapsed and raised positions they tend to become entangled with the bedclothes and may trap an operators fingers. The cot sides are difficult to dismantle from the bed and are bulky and thus awkward to store. They also tend to trap dirt and germs and are difficult to clean. The cot sides are heavy, making operational movement or attachment or detachment to the beds a problem. A further disadvantage is that patients can climb over or around the cot sides in order to get out of the bed. The presence of the cot sides presents a clinical appearance to the bed which can be disarming to the patients.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,074,375 (Kella) a restraint arrangement is provided to severely limit the degree of movement of a patient in a bed. A blanket is provided with longitudinal, transverse and diagonal straps to act as a restraining means and the purpose of all those straps must be to inhibit as much movement as possible of a patient in the bed. Certainly there is no disclosure of a cover according to one aspect of the present invention which is specifically designed to allow a person (not necessarily a patient) maximum freedom of movement on the mattress Furthermore, there is no way in which a patient in a bed having a cover according to Kella could ever reach the edge region of a bed against the restraint provided by the straps. Also, in Kella, the restraint can only be divided into two portions thus necessitating the complete detachment of the restraint from the bed before the restraint can be replaced.
A number of other prior proposals exist for restraining movement of an occupant in a bed which cannot be easily replaced without undoing the attachment of the covers from the bed.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,131 (Diehl) the fabric restraint (even without the reinforcing straps of Kella) holds a patient in a surpine position. In European Patent Publication No. 165 043 A3 (Brooks) a restraint cover holds a child in a flat position with the child being located between upper and lower layers which are comprised by a continuous portion which is folded.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,857,124 (Hadley) discloses a bottom sheet which is secured to a mattress with a bedspread being releasably secured to the bottom sheet. However the purpose of the bedspread being so attached is to ensure that the bed cover remains in place and if the patient were to move over the side of the mattress then the mattress would roll of the bed or the bottom sheet would be pulled round the mattress thus allowing the patient to fall to the ground.